


Written in Stone

by swallowthewhale



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 17:18:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12215334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swallowthewhale/pseuds/swallowthewhale
Summary: Grief is just love with no place to go.Caitlin dies and Cisco mourns.





	Written in Stone

Cisco stands at her grave for hours after the funeral party has left. He shivers in the brisk wind and watches the late frost slowly turn to pearls of condensation on the headstone. Caitlin’s mom had asked him what he thought Caitlin might have liked to have written on her marker, but Cisco hadn’t been able to think of anything that could sum up Caitlin Snow in less than two sentences. She had probably meant a favorite quote, or some meaningful saying, but Cisco had gone home and written a full page of silly jokes that would have made Caitlin laugh. He’d cried himself to sleep that night, like he has every night since she died. He’s not sure where all the water is coming from, because he feels hollowed out inside, like all the stuff that had made him Cisco had gone with her.

“Grief,” he says to the headstone, a bit of his eulogy that he had cut out, “is really love.” He’d found it online and it had hit him so hard in the chest that she was really gone that he hadn’t been able to include it. He was sure he wouldn’t be able get it all out without crying. “It’s all the love you want to give but can’t. The more you loved someone, the more you grieve. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

Cisco hunches over a little. He can still picture her smile, feel her shoulders under his arm, hear her laugh. He lives and relives moments of their lives over and over in his dreams, and worse, moments that never happened. Moments that happened in another timeline, another lifetime. But he can’t hear things she never said. Three words he’d never had the courage to say, either.

“I love you, Cait.”

But it’s too late.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song of the same name by Olafur Arnalds. The quote is by Jamie of allmylooseends.com
> 
> I'm on tumblr at @swallowthewhale if you feel the need to yell at me for killing Caitlin


End file.
